Chapter 13 : The Flood
The Licker's claws were buried in my stomach.
Pain exploded through my body—white-hot, absolute, the kind that short-circuits thought and reduces everything to primal response. I grabbed the creature's wrist and pulled. Claws ripped free, taking flesh with them. Blood sprayed across the train tracks, dark in the emergency lighting.
The Licker screamed. Not in pain—in hunger. Its tongue lashed toward my face.
I caught it.
My hand closed around the muscular appendage, slick with saliva and god knew what else. The texture made my stomach heave, but I held on. The creature tried to retract, to pull back, but my grip was stronger than it expected.
Stronger than I expected.
The burning sensation in my blood had returned—that frequency I couldn't name, that power I barely understood. It sang through my veins despite the wounds, despite the blood loss, despite every reason my body should be shutting down.
I pulled.
The Licker came with its tongue, dragged off-balance, stumbling toward me on the rail ties. Its claws raked the air, finding nothing. Its exposed brain pulsed with frustrated rage.
I drove my fist into that brain.
The impact sent shockwaves up my arm. Bone cracked. Gray matter splattered. The Licker spasmed once, twice, then collapsed across the tracks like a puppet with cut strings.
I stood over it, breathing in ragged gasps, my free hand pressed against the ruin of my stomach. Blood poured between my fingers. The wounds were bad—worse than anything I'd survived in my previous life. In a normal body, I'd have minutes before shock set in. Before death followed.
But this wasn't a normal body.
I watched the edges of the wound pulse. Not with blood loss—with something else. The flesh was moving. Knitting. Slowly, painfully, the torn tissue was pulling itself back together.
Regeneration. Phase one, maybe two. Whatever the hell that means.
The train was gone. Its lights had vanished around a curve in the tunnel, carrying Rain and Kaplan and Alice and the others toward the surface. Toward safety, or whatever passed for safety in a world built on Umbrella's lies.
I was alone in the dark, bleeding, healing, surrounded by the death I'd caused.
"Well," I said to no one. "This could be worse."
The tunnel echoed my words back. Somewhere in the distance, I heard other sounds. Shuffling. Groaning. The unmistakable noise of the dead learning to walk.
The Red Queen's shutdown had opened every door in the Hive. Every containment zone. Every sealed corridor that had kept the infection from spreading. Five hundred corpses, give or take, were now free to roam—and I was between them and the surface.
My legs threatened to buckle. I locked my knees, forced myself upright. The stomach wound was still closing, the regeneration drawing on reserves I didn't know I had. Every second of healing cost energy I couldn't spare.
I needed to move.
The tracks stretched in both directions—back toward the Hive's depths, forward toward the mansion terminus. Forward was the only option that made sense. Catch up with the train. Find the others. Get the hell out of this tomb.
I started walking.
Each step sent pain lancing through my gut. The healing continued, but it was slow—slower than I needed. At this rate, the wounds would close completely in maybe thirty minutes. I didn't have thirty minutes.
My senses reached outward, mapping the tunnel around me. Signatures everywhere, most concentrated in the facility behind me. But some had found their way into the train tunnels. Drawn by noise, by movement, by whatever instinct drove the dead to hunt the living.
Three signatures ahead. Moving slowly. Not directly toward me, but close enough to intersect my path.
I checked my belt. The tactical knife was still there—thank god for secure sheaths. My Beretta was gone, lost in the fall from the train. The shotgun too.
Knife against zombies. The math was bad, but it was the only math I had.
The first zombie appeared around a curve in the tunnel. Lab coat, name tag still pinned to the breast pocket. Dr. Something-or-Other, reduced to a shambling hunger that didn't care about degrees or discoveries.
I waited until it was close. Then I moved.
The knife took it through the temple. Clean. Quick. The body dropped, and I was already turning toward the second one—a security guard who'd died reaching for a radio he'd never use again.
Two more strikes. Two more corpses.
My hands shook when it was done. Not from fear—from exhaustion. The regeneration was pulling everything I had, leaving nothing for combat or movement or the basic act of staying upright.
I leaned against the tunnel wall and let myself breathe.
The wound in my stomach had closed another inch. Pink tissue covered what had been open meat. The pain was fading, replaced by an ache that was almost manageable.
Keep moving. Rest when you're dead.
Ranger doctrine. It had carried me through two combat deployments. It would carry me through this.
I pushed off the wall and continued forward.
The tunnel seemed endless. Same concrete walls, same emergency strips casting amber light, same rails stretching into darkness. I counted steps to stay focused. Lost count. Started again.
My senses picked up more signatures ahead. A larger group this time—eight, maybe ten, clustered near a side passage. Maintenance access, probably. A route into the tunnel from the Hive's lower levels.
I couldn't fight ten. Not in my current state. Not with a knife and willpower.
But as I approached, something strange happened.
The signatures... responded. Not physically—they were still shambling in their holding pattern, unaware of my presence. But something in my awareness shifted. A connection formed, thin and tentative, like a radio signal cutting through static.
They're infected. I'm infected. The virus in me, the virus in them...
I stopped walking. Closed my eyes. Reached for that connection.
Pain exploded behind my eyes. My nose started bleeding—warm copper on my lips, dripping down my chin. The connection was there, solid now, a bridge between my consciousness and the primitive drives that animated the dead.
I pushed.
Stop.
The shuffling ceased.
I opened my eyes. The zombies stood motionless in the tunnel ahead. Eight of them, frozen mid-step, their empty eyes turned toward something they couldn't see.
Move aside.
They parted. Not gracefully—their bodies jerked and stumbled like marionettes controlled by an amateur puppeteer. But they parted, creating a path through their ranks.
I walked through.
The strain was immense. Every second of control cost something—energy, focus, will. My vision swam. My legs threatened to give out. The stomach wound, nearly closed, began seeping blood again as my body diverted resources to the power I was using.
I made it through the gap. Released the connection.
The zombies resumed their shambling immediately. But they didn't pursue. Whatever instinct should have driven them toward warm flesh seemed confused, disrupted. They milled in place, uncertain.
I didn't stop to analyze it. Just kept moving. One foot in front of the other. Forward until there was no more forward left.
The tunnel ended at a platform. Same design as the one we'd entered through—Umbrella's love of corporate uniformity extending even to underground death traps. The train was gone, but the platform itself was intact.
And there, huddled near the exit stairs, four figures turned at the sound of my footsteps.
Rain raised her MP5, then lowered it immediately. "Harrison?"
I tried to answer. My legs gave out instead.
The platform's concrete was cold against my face. Distant voices shouted things I couldn't parse. Hands grabbed my arms, my shoulders, turning me over.
Rain's face swam into view. "Jesus Christ. Your stomach—what happened?"
"Licker," I managed. "Killed it. Walked here. Tired."
"You walked? Through the tunnel? Alone?"
"Wasn't my first choice."
She almost laughed. The sound was half-hysterical, the release of tension that had been building since I'd fallen from the train. "The train stopped a quarter mile ahead. Engine failure. We've been trying to find another route."
"The others?"
"Kaplan's working on getting the auxiliary power online. Alice is with him. Matt and Spence are..." She glanced over her shoulder. "Being useless, mostly."
"One?"
Rain's expression changed. Hardened. "You saw. The Licker got him before we could react."
Right. I'd seen One die. The memory was fuzzy, buried under pain and combat and the desperate fight that followed, but it was there.
"I'm sorry."
"Save it for later." She helped me sit up, leaning against a pillar. "Can you move?"
"Give me five minutes."
"We might not have five minutes. The things in this place—they're everywhere. We've been hearing them in the walls."
As if on cue, my senses flared. Movement in the tunnels behind me. The zombies I'd controlled, plus others, drawn by noise and the promise of prey.
"We need to go. Now." I pushed myself upright, ignoring the screaming protest of my half-healed wounds. "Where's the exit?"
Rain pointed toward a stairwell at the platform's far end. "Up there. Kaplan says it leads to the mansion's basement."
The same route we'd used to enter. Full circle. Back to where everything started.
"Then let's go."
Rain ducked under my arm, taking some of my weight. We moved toward the stairs as fast as my damaged body allowed.
Behind us, the first zombies emerged onto the platform.
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